EBooks, Audio Books and Poetry

The trend now is to move away from paper books and to do reading on a device or to listen to stories. These ideas have a lot of merit. You can have many books on an Kindle or a Nook. They are easy to carry and allow for bookmarking and all kinds of things. Audio stories are even easier. Just download an MP3 file to any device and sit back and listen.

If they are so great, does this mean the end of paper books. If it does, I believe it would be a big mistake. Everyone of these devices used to read or listen to books require power. I don’t care how stingy they are, they need power. Also, any device can be dropped and broken, and a device doesn’t cost twenty bucks. Sure with a paper book you have one book, not a thousand, but how many books do you read at once? The one advantage that I would give to eBooks is that you don’t have to run out to the bookstore to get a new book.

My novels are also in eBook form. “The Teacher”, “500 Years from Home,” and “The Long Journey Home” are available for the Nook reader. My novel “Pioneers” is in the Kindle store for the Kindle reader and the Kindle Fire.

I have also converted some of my novels to audio. It wasn’t done in a studio and I did my own reading, but I think it turned out well. I added music and sound effects to some of the stories. Here is a link to the first page of my novel “Pioneers.” Please listen to it and tell me what you think of it. I am especially looking for listener’s reactions to the sound effects and the music. Pick it up at http://mfi.re/listen/khmkja5dk37jezf/00_01_C1_Pioneers_Page_01_unknown.mp3.

I know that I don’t have the best voice for recording. Maybe one day I can find someone with the proper voice that would be interested in reading and recording my stories. I also created audio for my novel “Quest for the Golden Dove,” and my short story series “The Solarian Defense Directorate.” The disk pictures above is the story “The Zero Factor” from my Solarian series. The picture below is the cover for my “Quest for the Golden Dove” audio novel.

The Heroes from “Quest for the Golden Dove”

There is a commercial running right now. I don’t know what they are selling but they talk about the value of poetry as being part of the beauty of the world. Everyone enjoys poetry though they may not think so. Remember, song lyrics are poetry. If you like songs, you like poetry. But poetry is much more than that. It can express all sorts of emotions. When we think of poetry we think of love and beauty, but there are poems that can excite and even terrify. I enjoyed classic poetry from Tennyson, Keats, Browning, and the old gray poet Walt Whitman. My favorite was actually Edgar Allen Poe. The poems “Annabelle Lee,” “The Raven,” and “The Bells” were my favorites. They are not only grim and a bit scary, they are also sad. They show the anguish of a man that has lost his love. The poems have a great tempo. Many people have read “The Raven” and they even made a silly movie based on it. I like to recite the first few stanzas of that poem. “The Bells” is a great poem for tempo and alliteration. It is a prime example of the use of alliteration.

I have written about thirty poems. My favorites are the poems I write about my love of writing, like the one above. My other favorites are my Halloween poems. I guess that is my Poe influence. Here is a link to my poem “Nightmares for All.” I put in a link to that one. It’s a bit long to have in the post.

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Pete is a retired software developer, a writer, and a martial arts instructor. He lives in Maryland with his wife Cathy and they are enjoying their retirement.
Pete is the author of four novels, "The Teacher", 500 Years from Home", and "The Long Journey Home" are available at Lulu.com; and "Pioneers" in available at the Kindle Book Store.